HOWTO - Linux VNCserver

You will need several things to get started:

root privledges

A good password!

As I mentioned above, this example is done with RHEL, which comes standard with VNCserver installed. To start the vncserver simply invoke the following commands:

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So what did we do there? First, we started the vncserver service. It may or may not have already been running on your system. Next we set a password to access the VNC desktop. When you set the password, you will not see any characters on the screen, and you must enter the password twice. You will only need to do this the very first time you run vncserver. The password will be saved in the Linux filesystem, and you can change it at any time by invoking the vncpasswd command again. Last, to activate the VNC desktop, we simply invoked the vncserver command. Notice the output; the desktop is named "roswell:1" which can also be replaced via the machines IP address.

Upon successful connection, you will be prompted for a password. You will then see a terminal screen that will allow you to execute commands:

If you are new to linux, running VNC server with a terminal isn't going to do you much good. You might want to have a menu-driven GUI like Windows. No problem. Follow these steps:

First, we are going to assume that VNCserver is running under the root user, as shown with the example above. For this example, I will be editing my VNCserver to enter Gnome. You can specify a KDE desktop if you have KDE installed on your server. Make sure you are in the root directory.

Using vi (vim) to edit the xstartup file, make sure your file matches this one:

Notice that the last line is "startx &" as this command will launch Gnome upon login via VNCserver. If you are using a KDE desktop, the line "startkde &" should replace the last line.

Logging in, you will be presented with a Gnome or KDE desktop.

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